"It is in the simplicity of your ordinary work, in the monotonous details of each day, that you have to find the secret, which is hidden from so many, of something great and new: Love.”
(Saint Josemaría)

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A New Primary School for Ugandans

Since 1996 Bugala, an Opus Dei centre in Kampala, has organized work camps in villages in Uganda. This year, a group of Germans, Spaniards and Ugandans completed Phase 2 of St. Mary's Primary School.

Social initiativesNov. 14, 2016

Inside the old primary school.

Since 1996 on an almost yearly basis, Bugala, an Opus Dei centre in
Kampala, has organized work camps in different villages in Uganda.
The camps usually fall in the summer months of July and August.

Last year a group from Galicia in Spain and another from Cologne,
Germany, completed the first phase of St. Mary’s Primary School,
Kimbo in Gomba district, 85 kilometres south-west of Kampala. The
project consisted of three classrooms and an office, now in use.

This year, the same groups returned to finish the job, i.e. the four
remaining classrooms, to accommodate all seven years of the primary
course. They were joined by about 20 Ugandan University students at
different moments of the project.

In the middle of July the first group of 11 Spaniards, majority
students from Galicia, arrived to get the classroom block underway.
Together with their Ugandan counterparts and the more experienced
local masons, they constructed the block from the foundations to the
ring beam paving way for the roof. Work involved mixing mortar and
concrete, brick laying, carrying and crushing heavy stones, tying
steel beams and all of this in a dry blistering heat.

Not everything was manual labour, however. On some days, the
participants in different groups would engage the children of the
school in games and other educative activities such as proper washing
of hands. Others had teaching sessions with the children and some
taught them catechism.

Having noticed from the previous year that most of the children in
the school lacked shoes, the visitors from Spain brought with them
many pairs of shoes and sandals to donate to the children. It was
moving to see the visitors wash the very dirty feet of the children
before they tried on their new shoes. Though many of the children
were found to have large feet, a good number found something that
would fit them. Noticeably the children still came to school with
bare feet the next day. The reason was that their parents told them
that the shoes were to be reserved for Sundays when they went to
church and other important celebrations. A Spanish doctor who joined
the group later removed a number of jiggers from the feet of one of
the children in the school.

Work was every day, except Sundays, from 9.00am to 5.00pm. The day
started with mental prayer and Mass in a small chapel that had been
set up in the house where the participants were living.

Sunday Mass was at the nearby parish with the local people. Despite
the long two hour ceremony, the visitors enjoyed praying with the
villagers. Also on Sundays, the work camp participants made visits to
the poor and elderly in the surrounding villages taking them bread
and sugar. It was a good moment to see the poverty and misery in
which the people live, who at the same time were happy and very
welcoming.

Towards mid August, a group of nine arrived from Germany to complete
the works begun by the Spaniards. They too were joined by a large
group of local university students. Their work involved roofing,
plastering, fitting windows and doors, doing the floor and painting.

By the end of the month, both groups had left, and the little work
remaining, fitting windows, etc. was to be done by local masons. The
children, their parents and teachers are not the only ones to
benefit, however. From the comments of the visitors and the local
students, this brush with the poverty and simplicity of the people of
Kimbo had been not just a novel way of spending the summer months but
an opportunity to take stock of their comfortable routines and think
how they can give back something tangible to their community.

After all the work done over those two years, St. Mary's Primary School has moved from here: